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U.S.
labor backs efforts to stop ratification of CAFTA in Costa Rica
While the Bush Administration is pushing Costa Rica’s President
Óscar Arias Sánchez to finally ratify the Central
American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), the international labor movement
is closing ranks against it.
It’s
time to repeal the ‘double majority’
Oregon AFSCME executive director Ken Allen argues that Oregon's
'double majority' rule for local levies, brainchild of Bill Sizemore,
is a slap in the face at the fundamental tenets of democracy, and
voters should look to repeal it.
Think
again
A
column by Tim Nesbitt Jan.
5, 2007: Final column: My 'think again list' for 2007
I am excited about joining Governor Ted Kulongoski's staff, but
I am sad to have to give up this column. Still, I can't be a member
of the governor's leadership team and an independent commentator
on Oregon politics at the same time.
Dec.
15: Health care reform: Between hope for better and fear of worse
The most serious challenge for health care reformers now is not
contesting the might of the pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital
lobbies. It's controlling the height of our own expectations.
Dec.
1: Minimum wage — Triumph of common sense over conservative
ideology
The November election did more than send a lot of new Democrats
to Congress and state legislatures. It also delivered a resounding
affirmation of a values-based economic justice agenda.
Nov.
17: Unions helped to turn the tide of Oregon politics
That wasn't a political sneaker wave that hit Oregon on Nov. 7 this
year. It was the cresting of a new tide.
Nov.
3: My six-pick predictions for Oregon's next legislature
The contests for governor and the State Legislature in Oregon this
year are relatively easy to handicap. The real races start after
the election, when the stakes will be higher and the outcomes tougher
to predict.
Oct.
20: Another losing season? Wait ‘til next year for health
care reform
I’m
used to rooting for teams that start strong but never make it into
the playoffs. Still, when the game is elections and my team is health
care, I have a hard time adjusting to another fading finish.
Oct.
6, 2006: The ‘monkey in the middle’- class squeeze
Being
middle class these days is like being stuck in a game of ‘monkey
in the middle,’ in which the rich get all the tax breaks and
the poor get all the services, and we’re stuck between them
playing by the rules and never getting our hands on the ball.
Sept.
15, 2006: Labor Daze — When bad politics trumps a good economy
Does
George W. Bush get to veto the laws of economics? Or did he issue
one of those signing statements that said we can only have an economic
recovery if working families don't recover?
Sept.
1, 2006: Anti-public employee ads presage another war on unions
and governments
If
you’ve seen the Nurse Ratchet look-alike at a make-believe DMV counter
in those “Union Facts” ads, you have witnessed more than just another
random act of public employee pillory.
Aug.
18, 2006: A health plan for desperate Democrats
If
you want an example of health care reform gone wrong, don't look
to Washington, D.C., where Republicans and Democrats have been arguing
over marginal, market-based reforms like health savings accounts.
Look to the blue state of Massachusetts.
Aug.
4, 2006: Bill Sizemore’s born-again accountability
At
first glance, it looked like a case of born-again accountability.
Or jailhouse redemption. Or just plain chutzpah. Here was Bill Sizemore,
the guy whose organization was convicted of racketeering for using
forged and falsely-obtained signatures on initiative petitions,
complaining that we haven’t done enough to clean up the initiative
process.
July
21, 2006: The fight-fire-with-fire strategy heats up another election
This
will be a year when we get to repel the flickering arrows of the
old curmudgeons like Don McIntire and shoot back with a hot, new
idea that can make medical care more affordable for working families.
July
7, 2006: Yes, we can ... make higher education affordable again
One
thing we can say about the 12,000 students who received degrees
from Oregon's public universities this year: More than any students
who came before them, they earned their educations.
June
16, 2006: Wanted — A more hopeful agenda for America’s
working families
Enough
of the depressing reality shows about our vanishing jobs and declining
incomes. We need to make time for more hopeful points of view.
June
2, 2006: Westlund can't win, but he can spoil the race for governor
Oregon’s
political pundits are calling this a three-way race for governor.
If that’s the case, put Ben Westlund on the bottom of your
trifecta ticket, because he’s a sure thing to finish third.
May
5, 2006: The week of the living uninsured
This
is "Cover the Uninsured Week" — the fourth such
week in four years. They haven't been good weeks or good years.
April
21, 2006: Uniting hearts and minds for immigration reform
“Winning
hearts and minds” can sound like a noble goal in politics.
But splitting hearts and minds is a more common tactic, as we’re
seeing now in the struggle over immigration reform.
April
7, 2006: Channeling Sam Gompers
Advice
to state candidates who want to speak to working families on schools,
health care and jobs: Try channeling that old labor war horse Samuel
Gompers.
March
3, 2006: The ABCs of our health care crisis
Pollsters
report that health care has supplanted jobs and education as the
Number One concern of Oregonians. Our health care crisis is two-fold.
Too many people don’t have insurance, and those who have it
are paying more than they can afford in premiums, co-pays and deductibles.
These two problems are connected, and they’re both problems
that our government is going to have to solve.
February
17, 2006: Portland schools —When the handbasket arrives in
hell
All
the stopgap funding measures that kept Portland’s schools
from going under have or will soon run out. As a result, a district
which cut almost 10 percent of its teaching positions last year
now faces a budget hell-hole large enough to consume 30 percent
of the teachers who will still be on its payroll next September.
February
3, 2006: The Working Families Party rewrites the script for pro-worker
politics
We may have found a new answer to the question, "What's the matter
with Kansas?"
January
20, 2006: What my grandson can tell us about health care
The experience
of my daughter and grandson offers a telling example of what is
right and what is wrong with our health care system in this country
— and a reminder of how careful we should be when it comes
to overhauling a public-private system that is critical to the financial
well-being of working families.
January
6, 2006: Reuniting to win: How local union movement overcame AFL-CIO
split
A surprising
thing happened after the defection of four major unions fractured
the national AFL-CIO last summer. Back home, in state after state,
our local unions held together. Or, if they began to disassemble
themselves, as happened here in Oregon, they soon found a way to
reassemble themselves and are now close to full strength again.
December
16, 2005: Campaign finance reform: An Oregon primer
Voters in Oregon
will be taken to school next year on the complex subject of campaign
finance reform — one of those subjects that looks good in
the course catalogue but turns out to be a mind-numbing experience.
December
2, 2005: A little DNA testing tells a lot about job creation
You may have
missed the press release, but Oregon now has one of the best job-creating
economies in the nation. So it won't be long before Gov. Ted Kulongoski
and Republican legislative leaders, whose ideas about government's
role in the economy don't often coincide, start bragging that they
made it happen. Victory has a thousand fathers. But we don't usually
do any DNA testing.
November
18, 2005: What will we say when the jeering stops?
It's hard to
resist a "we-told-you-so" response to the dramatic failures
of the free traders, the tax cutters and the government shrinkers
that we have witnessed this year.
November
4, 2005: What Bill Sizemore taught us
Sizemore's attacks
united our unions as nothing had before. The more threats we faced,
the more we united and toughened our response. In that sense, Sizemore
was the perfect "good enemy."
October
7, 2005: Beyond the 5 stages of grief for Oregon education
Listen to almost
any discussion of the prospects for repairing our education system
in Oregon today, and you're likely to hear a dysfunctional version
of what psychologists call the five stages of grief.
September
16, 2005: Labor's lessons from the storm
Tragically, it
took a raging storm to tear away the psychological blinders that
have kept so many Americans from confronting the contradictions
of a "robust" economy that can't deliver good jobs for
a majority of its working families."
September
2, 2005: The case for 'fair share health care'
In the debate
between those who want to repair our employment-based health care
system and those who want to scrap it for a taxpayer-funded system,
a central issue is: "Who pays?"
August
19, 2005: Living within our means can trump living mean
No one denies
that Governor Ted Kulongoski was dealt a tough hand when he took
office almost three years ago. But how the governor played that
hand is a matter on which there is great disagreement.
August
5, 2005: No unions — no middle class. It’s that simple
We came to Chicago
for the 50th anniversary convention of the AFL-CIO as one federation
of unions; but we left as two. How did this happen, and what does
it mean for our union movement?
July
15, 2005: Present at the re-creation of our union movement
No one knows
what our union movement will look like after the AFL-CIO’s
national convention in Chicago at the end of this month. But you
can be sure it will be different.
July
1, 2005: Baby boomers, unite – to keep what we’ve paid
for
Remember when
we had a funding problem with Social Security? Now, it appears that
we have more money than we know what to do with, because the latest
proposal from Congress for privatizing our Social Security system
is all about tapping the money in the system’s burgeoning
trust funds.
June
17, 2005: Want a real raise? Try a minimum wage for health benefits
When will working
America get a real raise again? Not until we get more employers
to start paying their fair share for health care.
June
3, 2005: Wal-Mart campaigns against employer-paid health insurance
Strike up the
band. That’s what Wal-Mart and the governor of Maryland did
when they teamed up to kill a bill that would have required the
company to pay more for its workers’ health insurance.
May
20, 2005: Bad bets make for losing budgets
I know a bad
bet when I hear one, and I heard a whopper from Oregon State Representative
Scott Bruun on the House floor two weeks ago when he was touting
the House Republicans’ latest windfall for the wealthy —
a bill to cut state income taxes that investors pay on their profits
to just half of what we pay on our paychecks.
May
6, 2005: CAFTA, like NAFTA, will be a graveyard for American jobs
Here’s
a challenge to proponents of more “free trade” deals,
such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) now awaiting
ratification by Congress: Show us the jobs.
April
15, 2005: The contradiction of being ‘pro-labor, but not pro-union’
Unions
aren’t just a temporary solution to problems caused by bad
employers. We are part of the permanent solution to much larger
problems that inevitably result from an economic system that allows
powerful corporations to determine what we’re paid for our
education, skills and effort.
March
18, 2005: What's the matter with Kansas?
"What's
the matter with Kansas?" Or any of those other states where
politicians have been winning votes from working families while
advancing policies that decimate their jobs and paychecks? The answer
may well be,"They don't have Working America."
March
4, 2005: Welcome to the franchise society
President
Bush’s “ownership society” is one of those poll-tested
themes that play well to American audiences. If you work for a living,
ownership suggests being your own boss and controlling your work
life. But don’t expect the president’s ownership society
to deliver those benefits.
Feb.
18, 2005: The great Social Security tax heist
Who
took all the money that we’ve been paying into the Social
Security trust fund, where did it go, and how are we going to get
it back?
Feb.
4, 2005: What Lars Larson and his callers don't understand about
unions
The
question from Caller #2 on the Lars Larson radio show last month
took me by surprise. Larson was hosting his show from Washington,
D.C. I was on the phone from my office in Salem. And his producer
was lining up callers from around the state to complain about OregonÕs
minimum wage.
Jan.
21, 2005: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging, and other
false truisms
Our
state government is in a deep hole now when it comes to meeting
its most basic obligations, like keeping schools open on a full-time
schedule. There are four different points of view about this problem.
Jan.
7, 2005: Stay calm, don’t let Bush scare you into abandoning
Social Security
When
President Bush sounded the alarm about the future of Social Security
on the day after his re-election, most Americans said, “Huh?”
Aug.
6, 2004: Aunt Charlotte celebrates Bush’s Palace — until
she almost loses everything
Aunt
Charlotte had a magic touch on the slot machines. Or so we thought.
June
4, 2004: There's nothing to cheer about in this recovery
Sometime
recently, the jobless recovery became a different kind of recovery
– a joyless recovery.
May
7, 2004: Bush v. Kerry: This is the title fight for our priorities
Not
all candidates are fighting for us as much as they want us to believe.
April
16, 2004: America's workers deserve better
America's
workers deserve more than a lottery economy - with huge payouts
to corporations and losing tickets for working families.
April
2, 2004: We want our jobs back When
leaders say they’ll fight to defend every job and then vote
for tax breaks for corporate outsourcing, voter must hold them accountable
for their betrayal.
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